This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial ...
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This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial emasculation of Asian American men from cultural manhood. During the post-civil rights moment of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility challenges an uncritical complicity with the parable of racial magnetism that suppresses Black revolution. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors employ the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity during the formation of the Asian American Writing movement. In Yardbird Reader 3, the personal and professional bonds between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed are important moments of Afro-Asian bonds in alternative multiethnic publishing. Both anthologies showcase the centrality of Blackness as a conceptual and material basis for Asian American writing to emerge in the post-civil rights era.Less

The Asian American Writing Movement and Blackness : Race and Gender Politics in Asian American Anthologies

Chong Chon-Smith

Published in print: 2015-04-01

This chapter explores Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 and shows how the editors utilize the rhetoric of Black radicalism as a means to conceptualize the racial emasculation of Asian American men from cultural manhood. During the post-civil rights moment of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility challenges an uncritical complicity with the parable of racial magnetism that suppresses Black revolution. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors employ the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity during the formation of the Asian American Writing movement. In Yardbird Reader 3, the personal and professional bonds between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed are important moments of Afro-Asian bonds in alternative multiethnic publishing. Both anthologies showcase the centrality of Blackness as a conceptual and material basis for Asian American writing to emerge in the post-civil rights era.

In synthesizing the strands of a knotted debated that was almost five decades old, this chapter engages four writers—Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray—who wrote in ...
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In synthesizing the strands of a knotted debated that was almost five decades old, this chapter engages four writers—Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray—who wrote in interesting ways against the orthodoxy of an oppositional art and culture that dominated the debate about racial aesthetics during the 1960s. Each of these authors challenged the idea of black culture as set apart from (or necessarily opposed to) the larger American cultural scene, and they complicated facile ideas that conflated art and ideology—especially in the work of black writers. Ishmael Reed’s Neo-HooDoo aesthetic, in particular, theorized and performed a vision of American that eschewed the racial binary even as it envisioned a radical spiritual alterity in the form of a church. Finally, in their efforts to rethink relationships between race and nation, as well as literature and politics, Reed, Walker, Ellison, and Murray also invited a more complicated account of the entangled actualities of race, religion, and aesthetics in American life.Less

Contrary Spirits

Josef Sorett

Published in print: 2016-09-01

In synthesizing the strands of a knotted debated that was almost five decades old, this chapter engages four writers—Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray—who wrote in interesting ways against the orthodoxy of an oppositional art and culture that dominated the debate about racial aesthetics during the 1960s. Each of these authors challenged the idea of black culture as set apart from (or necessarily opposed to) the larger American cultural scene, and they complicated facile ideas that conflated art and ideology—especially in the work of black writers. Ishmael Reed’s Neo-HooDoo aesthetic, in particular, theorized and performed a vision of American that eschewed the racial binary even as it envisioned a radical spiritual alterity in the form of a church. Finally, in their efforts to rethink relationships between race and nation, as well as literature and politics, Reed, Walker, Ellison, and Murray also invited a more complicated account of the entangled actualities of race, religion, and aesthetics in American life.

This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a ...
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This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a widely registered crisis in the idea of black community and specifies the problems of racial representation sparked by this crisis. To distinguish postmodern from modern projects of racial representation, it looks closely at exemplary efforts to forge new forms of community suited to the changed realities of the post-Civil Rights period. These entail a shift from uplift to populist and from print to vernacular paradigms of black intellectual work. It is argued that even as they stress their critical distance from previous models of black community, postmodern cultural critics find it difficult to legitimize their own claims to racial representation without reanimating the cultural politics of 1960s black nationalism. In the domain of print literature, antirealism and textual self-reflection are generally identified as the unique elements of postmodern black fiction and said to disable essentialist constructs of black culture and community. Such assumptions are disputed through a comparative analysis of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and John Edgar Wideman's Reuben. In their common effort to incarnate the black urban writer in the image of Thoth, Egyptian god of writing, these novels explicitly engage the difficulties of resolving postmodern problems of racial representation through the medium of print literature.Less

The Postmodern Moment in Black Literary and Cultural Studies

Madhu Dubey

Published in print: 2003-09-01

This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a widely registered crisis in the idea of black community and specifies the problems of racial representation sparked by this crisis. To distinguish postmodern from modern projects of racial representation, it looks closely at exemplary efforts to forge new forms of community suited to the changed realities of the post-Civil Rights period. These entail a shift from uplift to populist and from print to vernacular paradigms of black intellectual work. It is argued that even as they stress their critical distance from previous models of black community, postmodern cultural critics find it difficult to legitimize their own claims to racial representation without reanimating the cultural politics of 1960s black nationalism. In the domain of print literature, antirealism and textual self-reflection are generally identified as the unique elements of postmodern black fiction and said to disable essentialist constructs of black culture and community. Such assumptions are disputed through a comparative analysis of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and John Edgar Wideman's Reuben. In their common effort to incarnate the black urban writer in the image of Thoth, Egyptian god of writing, these novels explicitly engage the difficulties of resolving postmodern problems of racial representation through the medium of print literature.

This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the ...
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This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.Less

“Scheming, Treacherous, and Out for Revenge” : Ethnic Imperialism

Crystal S. Anderson

Published in print: 2013-05-14

This chapter uses Lee’s film The Chinese Connection (1972) to explore the theme of ethnic imperialism involving Japanese and African American cultures in Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai in 1908, tensions resulting from Japanese encroachment on Chinese sovereignty and resources drive the action. In this way, The Chinese Connection prefigures the theme of ethnic imperialism, with the Japanese as antagonists who represent a colonizing power bent on erasing Chinese culture and imposing Japanese culture upon the citizens.

This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels ...
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This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.Less

Crystal S. Anderson

Published in print: 2013-05-14

This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.

This chapter shows two epigraphs— Ishmael Reed's Black Power Poem and Frank Schaeffer's Christianity Is Truth Rather Than Religion— explaining the mutual attention with which emergent ...
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This chapter shows two epigraphs— Ishmael Reed's Black Power Poem and Frank Schaeffer's Christianity Is Truth Rather Than Religion— explaining the mutual attention with which emergent multiculturalism and the conservative Christian resurgence regarded one another. Though progressive multiculturalism and the conservative resurgence were regarded as simple oppositional terms, both were reactions against the vaguely religious liberal consensus on civil rights that preceded them. In addition, the two sought to reenergize specific religious traditions, with consequences for their communities and for the question of how those communities should live. The chapter argues that multiculturalism and the conservative Christian resurgence were mutually entangled responses to the civil rights consensus of the 1950s and 1960s.Less

Multiculturalism, Secularization, Resurgence

Christopher Douglas

Published in print: 2016-04-21

This chapter shows two epigraphs— Ishmael Reed's Black Power Poem and Frank Schaeffer's Christianity Is Truth Rather Than Religion— explaining the mutual attention with which emergent multiculturalism and the conservative Christian resurgence regarded one another. Though progressive multiculturalism and the conservative resurgence were regarded as simple oppositional terms, both were reactions against the vaguely religious liberal consensus on civil rights that preceded them. In addition, the two sought to reenergize specific religious traditions, with consequences for their communities and for the question of how those communities should live. The chapter argues that multiculturalism and the conservative Christian resurgence were mutually entangled responses to the civil rights consensus of the 1950s and 1960s.

The final chapter examines post-War American fiction and the imaginative connection forged, in theory and in fiction, between hieroglyphs and code, computers, and electronic writing. It contends that ...
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The final chapter examines post-War American fiction and the imaginative connection forged, in theory and in fiction, between hieroglyphs and code, computers, and electronic writing. It contends that the association of hieroglyphs with universal languages and mixtures of media gets passed down to the newest of new media, digital code. From the postmodern novels of Thomas Pynchon through the literary-inflected sci-fi of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, from the Afro-Futurist works of Ishmael Reed to the mass market novels of Dan Brown, this pairing of hieroglyphs and digital code recurs across genre and style. By linking code with Egyptian writing, these writers emphasize the performativity of their language; just as code can create a simulation of reality, so words can call characters and settings into being.
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Matrices and Metaverses

Jesse Schotter

Published in print: 2018-01-01

The final chapter examines post-War American fiction and the imaginative connection forged, in theory and in fiction, between hieroglyphs and code, computers, and electronic writing. It contends that the association of hieroglyphs with universal languages and mixtures of media gets passed down to the newest of new media, digital code. From the postmodern novels of Thomas Pynchon through the literary-inflected sci-fi of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, from the Afro-Futurist works of Ishmael Reed to the mass market novels of Dan Brown, this pairing of hieroglyphs and digital code recurs across genre and style. By linking code with Egyptian writing, these writers emphasize the performativity of their language; just as code can create a simulation of reality, so words can call characters and settings into being.

This chapter explores radicalization of comic rage in Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. Emerging in the middle of the transition from the integrationist period ...
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This chapter explores radicalization of comic rage in Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. Emerging in the middle of the transition from the integrationist period of the civil rights movement to the nationalism of the Black Power movement, both works openly challenge fundamental concepts about race. In addition to targeting fundamental assumptions of Western superiority, these works also question simplistic counter-representations that African Americans present to combat racist stereotypes. Using forms increasingly important in African American literature, like drama and neo-slave narratives, these works enact comic rage as way to depict unique and powerful forms of resistance.Less

From Absence to Flight : The Appearance of Comic Rage in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements, 1966–1976

Terrence T. Tucker

Published in print: 2018-01-16

This chapter explores radicalization of comic rage in Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. Emerging in the middle of the transition from the integrationist period of the civil rights movement to the nationalism of the Black Power movement, both works openly challenge fundamental concepts about race. In addition to targeting fundamental assumptions of Western superiority, these works also question simplistic counter-representations that African Americans present to combat racist stereotypes. Using forms increasingly important in African American literature, like drama and neo-slave narratives, these works enact comic rage as way to depict unique and powerful forms of resistance.

This chapter situates the Pilipino-American writer Jessica Hagedorn’s early writing within the discussion of the larger publishing scene in1970s Bay Area. Through a close examination of “pet food,” ...
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This chapter situates the Pilipino-American writer Jessica Hagedorn’s early writing within the discussion of the larger publishing scene in1970s Bay Area. Through a close examination of “pet food,” the chapter provides a narrative analysis of the novella and sketches out concerns it registers about the emerging structure of globalization. The chapter introduces Stephen Vincent as the publisher of her early works. Looking at drafts of the novella and correspondences between Hagedorn, the chapter discusses Vincent’s role in the shaping of its final form.Less

The Making of the Cosmopolitan Subject

Rei Magosaki

Published in print: 2016-08-01

This chapter situates the Pilipino-American writer Jessica Hagedorn’s early writing within the discussion of the larger publishing scene in1970s Bay Area. Through a close examination of “pet food,” the chapter provides a narrative analysis of the novella and sketches out concerns it registers about the emerging structure of globalization. The chapter introduces Stephen Vincent as the publisher of her early works. Looking at drafts of the novella and correspondences between Hagedorn, the chapter discusses Vincent’s role in the shaping of its final form.

Focused on memoirs (W. C. Handy’s Father of the Blues) and other writing by turn-of-the-century African American performers who toured or lived in the American West, this chapter argues that African ...
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Focused on memoirs (W. C. Handy’s Father of the Blues) and other writing by turn-of-the-century African American performers who toured or lived in the American West, this chapter argues that African Americans used musical performance to make themselves at home in the West. Looking at Handy’s memoir, bandleader P. G. Lowery’s and minstrel show performer Salem Tutt Whitney’s newspaper letters, and singer Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be, this chapter argues that taking possession of the stage became a means of claiming space in the public sphere. Whereas contemporary African American writers such as Ishmael Reed explicitly allude to black folklore in their western writing, Handy, Lowery, Whitney, and Gordon do so more covertly. The allusions to black folklore in these texts suggests the existence of a continuing tradition of shared imagery and themes in African American literature of the American West that stretches from the late nineteenth-century to the present.Less

Michael K. Johnson

Published in print: 2014-02-01

Focused on memoirs (W. C. Handy’s Father of the Blues) and other writing by turn-of-the-century African American performers who toured or lived in the American West, this chapter argues that African Americans used musical performance to make themselves at home in the West. Looking at Handy’s memoir, bandleader P. G. Lowery’s and minstrel show performer Salem Tutt Whitney’s newspaper letters, and singer Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be, this chapter argues that taking possession of the stage became a means of claiming space in the public sphere. Whereas contemporary African American writers such as Ishmael Reed explicitly allude to black folklore in their western writing, Handy, Lowery, Whitney, and Gordon do so more covertly. The allusions to black folklore in these texts suggests the existence of a continuing tradition of shared imagery and themes in African American literature of the American West that stretches from the late nineteenth-century to the present.

This chapter establishes the definition of comic rage and traces the history of humor and militancy in African American literature and history. It distinguishes between comic rage and satire, ...
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This chapter establishes the definition of comic rage and traces the history of humor and militancy in African American literature and history. It distinguishes between comic rage and satire, culminating in an examination of George Schuyler’s Black No More. It details how comic rage acts as an abjection (from Julia Kristeva) that breaks down simplistic ideas about race and representations that appear in literature and popular culture. While identifying Richard Pryor as the most recognizable employer of comic rage, this chapter also points to figures like Sutton Griggs, Ishmael Reed, and Malcolm X; who embody the multiple combinations of anger and comedy that appear in the chapters of the book. It outlines the contents of the chapters that trace the development of comic rage in relation to the various political and literary moments in American and African American life.Less

Introduction : A Joke to the Eye

Terrence T. Tucker

Published in print: 2018-01-16

This chapter establishes the definition of comic rage and traces the history of humor and militancy in African American literature and history. It distinguishes between comic rage and satire, culminating in an examination of George Schuyler’s Black No More. It details how comic rage acts as an abjection (from Julia Kristeva) that breaks down simplistic ideas about race and representations that appear in literature and popular culture. While identifying Richard Pryor as the most recognizable employer of comic rage, this chapter also points to figures like Sutton Griggs, Ishmael Reed, and Malcolm X; who embody the multiple combinations of anger and comedy that appear in the chapters of the book. It outlines the contents of the chapters that trace the development of comic rage in relation to the various political and literary moments in American and African American life.

This chapter focuses on the strand of humor that expresses Anglo-American continuity. This strand runs through the present from eighteenth-century English wits. The colonization of African slaves in ...
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This chapter focuses on the strand of humor that expresses Anglo-American continuity. This strand runs through the present from eighteenth-century English wits. The colonization of African slaves in North America marks the voices and narratives of works as different as Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada with African traditions of oral humor. The best-known tradition of American literary humor is the British-American contrast, which applauds America’s divergence from European models of society and government. From its beginnings on the eighteenth-century New England stage, the British-American contrast flaunted America’s regional and immigrant dialects, diverse population, and lack of cosmopolitan polish. It tickled readers on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century because American claims to international superiority flew incongruously in the face of expanding European empires.Less

Humor and Empire

Judith Yaross Lee

Published in print: 2012-11-12

This chapter focuses on the strand of humor that expresses Anglo-American continuity. This strand runs through the present from eighteenth-century English wits. The colonization of African slaves in North America marks the voices and narratives of works as different as Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada with African traditions of oral humor. The best-known tradition of American literary humor is the British-American contrast, which applauds America’s divergence from European models of society and government. From its beginnings on the eighteenth-century New England stage, the British-American contrast flaunted America’s regional and immigrant dialects, diverse population, and lack of cosmopolitan polish. It tickled readers on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century because American claims to international superiority flew incongruously in the face of expanding European empires.